12
pieces on how the work actually goes.None of them are listicles.Notes on outreach, link acquisition, and what actually correlates with movement. Filter by what you came for, or open a row to see the claim before committing to the read.
An editorial link survives the editor deciding it adds nothing. Almost none of them would.
Every vendor says their links are editorial. Here is what the word is supposed to mean, and the four tells that give away a link that was bought.
Velocity is an output of having something worth pitching. Target it directly and quality is the thing that gives.
Chasing a links-per-month number is how campaigns end up with 40 placements and no movement. What velocity is actually reporting on.
Fix the list first. Then write the shortest email that proves you read the site.
Reply rate is not a copywriting problem. It is a targeting problem wearing a copywriting costume — but the copy still has to not be terrible.
The placement is worth what the page is worth. Vet the page, not the domain.
Most guest posts are placed on sites that never had traffic to give. Here is the filter I run before pitching anyone.
Six checks, cheapest first. Most sites die on check two, which is the point.
Domain Rating is the least interesting number on the page. These are the six checks that come first, in the order I run them.
Nobody was ever penalised for a ratio. They were penalised for the pattern the ratio was a side effect of.
A look at what actually correlated with recovery across the campaigns I have run since 2023, and why the ratio was never the interesting variable.
Paid links stopped being cheap once you price in the clean-up they eventually require.
Not a moral position. A cost one — the arithmetic stopped working somewhere around 2023 and it has not come back.
Report the pages that moved and what they are worth. Everything else is an appendix.
Domain Rating means nothing to the person approving the budget. What to put in front of them instead, and what to leave out.
Two thirds of the first quarter is preparation. Compressing it is how campaigns fail slowly.
What actually happens, week by week, and why almost nothing measurable occurs until somewhere around week ten.
Write the piece that costs the editor nothing to defend later.
Acceptance is not the finish line. The piece has to still be on the site in two years, which is a different and harder standard.
The list is the strategy. Everything after it is execution of a decision already made.
Everything downstream — the pitch, the piece, the placement — is determined by a decision made before any of it started.